The Schomburg Center celebrates the 75th anniversary of our renowned American Negro Theatre (ANT). Known to the locals as “The Harlem Library Little Theatre,” the ANT was founded in 1940 as a community space for thespians to work in productions that illustrated the diversity of black life. This exhibition is taken entirely from the Schomburg Collections and highlights the ANT’s stage productions from 1940 through 1949 with photographs, posters, playbills, and news clippings. Images include scenes from successful plays such as Anna Lucasta, studio workshops, and radio broadcasts featuring prominent talent like Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier and Lofton Mitchell, whose careers began at the ANT.

Featured Video

Harlem Cultural Archives, with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, presents this video in commemoration of our 75th Anniversary of the American Negro Theatre exhibition (on view now).

From The Exhibition

The American Negro Theatre provided a platform for black screenwriters, actors, and directors to hone their craft. In the exhibition, the Schomburg Center celebrates their work with historic images, such as this one of Jacqueline Andre, Leonard Yorr and Howard Augusta in Abram Hill’s "Walk Hard," based on the novel by Len Zinberg, 1944. Photographer unknown, ANT Alumni Collection, Maxwell Grandwille Collection.

Featured Event

Film director Roy T. Anderson and history professor Harcourt T. Fuller—both of whom are Maroon descendants—present Queen Nanny: Legendary Maroon Chieftainess. The film documents the struggle for freedom of the Jamaican maroons led by the 18th century spiritual leader and guerrilla tactician Nanny, one of the heroines of black resistance in the New World.